Jon Steinman: And welcome once again to Deconstructing
Dinner on Kootenay Co-op Radio, CJLY in Nelson, British Columbia, I'm your host
Jon Steinman.

Here
on Deconstructing Dinner, we dissect our daily food choices and discuss the
impacts that these choices have on ourselves, communities, and the planet.

Last
week we discussed the topic of Eggs, and heard from a number of guests who
discussed the various methods by which eggs are produced in this province. And
it was further discussed whether or not there is enough information out in the
open that provides British Columbians with sufficient background on these
various methods of production, so that we can make more educated choices when
purchasing eggs or products containing eggs. If you missed that show and have
access to the internet, you can listen to an archived version at www.cjly.net/deconstructingdinner.

Tonight's
show will be structured around the upcoming federal election and we will hear
from NDP candidate, Alex Atamanenko of this B.C. Southern Interior Riding. We will
be joined by Andrew Lewis, the Green Party candidate for the Saanich-Gulf
Islands riding. We will also hear from the President of the National Farmers
Union, Stuart Wells who spoke with me earlier from Swift Current. And also
joining the show will be Cathy Holtslander of the Beyond Factory Farming
Coalition and Andrea Gunner of the BC Organic Milling Co-op.

increase volume and fade theme out

January
23rd marks yet again, another federal election. As per usual, these
weeks leading up to the election consist of the country's two major political
parties accusing the other of breaking promises, of putting politics before
people; accusations that the Liberal Party dishonestly fixed their television
campaign. Accountability is the buzz-word for this election. It's thrown around
to the point where it has lost all meaning. And here we are left to wonder, who
is accountable for destroying this great word!

As
the party leaders bark at each other, the amount of time that is left to
promote how each party will best represent the needs and values of Canadians is
diminished to the point where only a few key issues can bubble to the surface.
These issues that the media then grabs a hold of seem to become the deciding
factors in who gets a vote and who gets elected.

But
what is the cost of this condensed lesson in politics? For one, and most
importantly, it's at the cost of Canadians not being given the chance to fully
understand and interpret the entire platforms of every party. Granted, with
only a handful of multi-issue parties to choose from, it becomes difficult to
find a platform that suits all
of the concerns that we may individually hold.

And
although each and every Canadian certainly holds a varying range of concerns
that then determines who we vote for, is it presumptuous to say that the one
concern we all share is food? Regardless of whether we devote hours of
attention per day to the food we eat, or maybe our connection to food just
consists of a frozen meal in the microwave, we are all still ingesting food and
are doing so on a consistent routine.

So
then where has all the talk of food and agriculture been in the past few weeks
leading up to this coming election? Last I checked food was essential to our
survival, and is therefore the foundation to all other facets of our lives.

But
when you read between the lines of party platforms, or televised leader debates
or newspaper editorials, food issues are everywhere - they're just not referred
to as such.

Healthcare for one has food and agriculture written all over it. What
we put into our bodies has a vital role in determining how much healthcare we need or will need. And when our sources of
water are being polluted with liquid manure from industrial farming operations,
and our air and soil are being filled with tank loads of chemicals being poured
onto our fruits and vegetables, healthcare
is certainly an important issue.

Reading
further between the lines we have been hearing the call to improve public
transit in order to alleviate congestion. Well you might as well call urban congestion a line up at the
grocery store because as the statistics show over 80% of our country's
population lives in urban centres. Compare this to 60% of the population living
in urban centres only 50 years ago when at this time over half of Canada's
rural population were farming families. Today, only 11% of Canada's rural
population is involved in farming. It's no doubt that the congestion we see in
our cities can be very much attributed to the state of Canada's farms and food
supply. And if I can note, these statistics are not based on the 250,000 person
population the Liberal government refers to as being rural.

Take a look
at the issues surrounding our environment of Kyoto. There's no need to get into
detail about how our agricultural lands have significant impacts on our
environment. No need to get in to detail that when we purchase a box of cookies
produced in a suburb of Toronto, the spent fuel required to get that chewy
chocolate chip cookie into your kitchen here in British Columbia has a major
effect on the quality of the air we breathe.

So
then what about a direct
reference to food and agricultural issues? Mention is certainly there in all of
our parties platforms, albeit very brief in some cases. But there is no doubt
that when taking a deeper look, the differences between party stances on food
and agricultural issues are significant. And we'll discuss some of these
differences on today's show.

I
want to remind those of you listening that if there is anything mentioned on
the show of which you would like to find out more information, you can visit
the show's website at www.cjly.net/deconstructingdinner
where all necessary information will be uploaded shortly after the broadcast.

soundclip

If
you are just tuning in, this is Deconstructing Dinner, where the topic of the
show today is the upcoming federal election, and how food and agriculture plays
into the platforms and visions of our country's political parties and
candidates. But, more importantly, today's show will help determine to what
degree Canadians need to be incorporating food and agricultural issues into our
decision process when choosing who we are voting for.

I
just touched on one method by which we can reinterpret many of the issues that
are at the forefront of the various campaigns leading up to this election. And
if we look at food directly and lay out our current food system on the table so
to speak, the picture is not much different.

As it
stands right now our food is governed by the principle of basic economies of
scale, where a handful of companies are controlling our food supply, and this
handful of companies are increasingly sourcing ingredients and products from
equally increasing distances. The centralization of farming, production and
distribution has created a system where a food product produced here in Nelson,
for example, would have to according to company policy, first be produced in a
sufficient quantity so it can then make its way to a distribution centre hundreds
of kilometres away before it could then make its way back to Nelson and onto
the shelf of one of our provinces major retailers. There's no wonder why urban
centres are completely surrounded by industrial parks of food processing plants
that ironically enough are eating up valuable agricultural land in order to be
as close to the distribution centres as possible.

As
these processing plants continue to giganticize their capacity, the need for
technology and safety measures becomes a vital necessity in order to limit the
chance of viral and bacterial outbreaks that these conditions are so conducive
to. In come the federal regulations that aim to ensure these safe conditions
are met. And left in the dust is the guy down the street who wants to make
tomato ketchup from his field of naturally grown tomatoes but has no possible
chance of doing so because the amount of finances required to meet these
production regulations far exceed his ability to do so. And, the statement then
rings true - there are no other kinds.

But
what is it that is holding this food system together? What is the key element
that provides the backbone for the survival of this industrial system of food?
And the foundation is that of natural resources - oil, most importantly. So
rewinding back to the list I touched on of election issues that are somehow
connected to food, well now you can add any talk of border security and
terrorist threats to the list of issues connected to our food supply, because
as we all know, the hunt for oil is inextricably linked to security issues.

But
security aside, this foundation for our food system - oil, is a non-renewable
resource that as we know is quickly disappearing. And as it does the price of
oil will only increase and this oil-dependent food system will become first too
costly to operate and eventually become obsolete. When it does, where will the
local and sustainable community-focused food systems be? Because as is the
current trend, our farmers who possess generations of invaluable knowledge and
skills passed down to them are now working in the country's major urbans
centres as they are unable to make a living otherwise.

And
so, here lies one of the key issues facing our food supply, and a key issue to
consider leading up to this upcoming election.

Given
how important the well-being of our local and regional farmers are to the
livelihood of you and I, I asked Stuart Wells to better explain the situation
and shed some light on where our country's political parties stand on this
issue of farmers incomes.

Stuart
is the President of the National Farmers Union - a member-based organization
that promotes the family farm as the most appropriate
and efficient means of agricultural production. Stuart is also a farmer
in South Western Saskatchewan, and I spoke with him over the phone from his
home in Swift Current.

Phone Interview

Jon Steinman: Stewart, here on Deconstructing Dinner
efforts are made to fully understand the impacts of our food choices. When we
go out and buy a loaf of bread, a Christmas turkey or a bag of apples for
example, one of main impacts resulting from these purchases is the financial
contribution that the purchase provides to farmers themselves. But as is the
case, farmers' incomes in 2004 were the second lowest they have ever been in
history. And many would question, well how could that be with the advent of
technological progress and the centralization of production and distribution.
Shouldn't farmers be better off than they've ever been Stewart?

Stewart Wells: Well, that's what we would think being
farmers in an organization that represents farmers. But that's not the way
things have worked out especially over the past 20 years. During the post
Second World War period from 1945 to 1985 roughly, Canadian farm incomes were
quite healthy and I'm talking now about net farm income. Farmers during that 40
year period could look at net incomes of anywhere between $10 and $30,000 per
year. Since the late 80s there's just been a one way trend for those net farm
incomes however and that's been to move ever lower. In the last couple of years
we've actually seen those net farm incomes - the money that farmers actually
receive from selling their produce on the market - those net farm incomes have
actually slipped into negative territory and gone actually below zero. And so
now in these last couple of years, farmers have received something like minus
$10 to $20,000 per year, on average again per farm. That minus $10 to $20,000
does not take into account the labour and management that family farmers across
the country have put into their operations. So that labour and management is
actually free and farmers are still losing $10 - $20,000 per year. So those
farmers have had to either take out loans at the bank and increase their debt
or sell off some sort of long-term assets or find off-farm employment or not
replace machinery, not repair machinery so their equity and their operations is
actually decreasing. Farmers right across the country have done all of those
things just in order to try and stay in business.

Jon Steinman: And welcome back to Deconstructing
Dinner. I want to remind you that Deconstructing Dinner is sponsored by the
Kootenay Co-op Natural Foods Store here in Nelson.

As we
just heard from Stewart Wells, farmers' incomes in Canada are at the second
lowest they have ever been in history. This is, of course, a major concern for
Canadians because the well-being of Canadian farmers translates into the
well-being of Canadians ourselves. As I continued on with this pre-recorded
interview we are listening to right now, I asked Stuart where all the money is
going?

Stewart Wells: One of the phrases that I'm fond of using
is that there's never been so much money in the food system but there's never
been so little of it actually getting back to the farmers. And the National
Farmers Union has really been the leader in trying to follow that food dollar
right through the system and find out where it is ending up. One of the papers
that the Farmers Union just published in December 2005 and it's available on
our website, that paper shows that while farmers were recording these record
low returns from the marketplace, the companies that we have to deal with in
order to produce the food - the input supply companies on the one side of us
and so that could be anything from banks to fertilizer companies to machinery
dealers and that kind of thing and the companies on the downstream side of us,
the handlers and retailers and processors and transportation industry - turns out
that those organizations and companies, on average are having the best years
ever. And so in 2004 which was the year we looked at, three-quarters of those
companies recorded either record or near record profits at the same time that
Canadian farmers are recording negative incomes.

So we
would point to that as a very important piece of the puzzle. Never before in
historical terms have the companies been so powerful, so consolidated that they
can actually charge whatever the market will bear. And their charges don't have
to have any relation to what their actual costs are in their own businesses.
We're in the situation where these companies are recording these record profits
while the farmers are recording record losses.

There's
a tremendous graph that is actually published by one of the fertilizer
companies in their annual report. They were relating their fertilizer prices to
corn prices and they showed that whenever corn prices went up, they put their
fertilizer prices up. And whenever corn prices went down they would put their
fertilizer prices down which meant that their fertilizer pricing was in no way
tied to their actual costs. They were charging whatever the market would bear
and if you had any actual competition in that marketplace, that company wouldn't
be able to do that. They would have to worry about the cost of production and
they would have to look at their costs and then try to charge a reasonable
profit - something that would allow them to stay in business. But they couldn't
just follow commodity prices up and down. And in every sector of the economy
that farmers have to deal with in our daily work, the companies have
consolidated themselves down to the place where there's usually between two and
five players. We would argue that there's no effective competition amongst
those very limited number of players.

The
Harvard School of Business apparently has a rule which they call the 4:40 rule.
And they say if you have four companies that are sharing a total of 40% of any
given market that there ceases to be effective competition. Well we're way, way
past that in Canada. In the beef sector for instance we have two companies now
- Cargill and Tyson's that are controlling 80% of that particular marketplace
right across the country. And when we look at grain handling and machinery
dealerships and food distributors and retailers, processors, it's all the same
right down the line. And so without any sort of effective competition there is
nothing to stop these organizations from continually increasing their revenues
from the marketplace.

Jon Steinman: Stewart
you're speaking of this consolidation of power when describing where all this
money is going and why farmers' incomes are at a negative as they are right
now. So you have all these links but what in essence you're describing is this
industrial farming and production model and this is the idea that's being sold
to us as though this is the future, this is the model that's going to result in
cheaper food and better living for all of us. But as you just described it the
increasing levels in the food system chain and its consolidation of power seems
to only increase the costs of production. And ultimately this is taking money
out of the farmers' pockets, having no economic or social benefit to us as
Canadians or as consumers. So here you're presenting this model and clearly
indicating well this is why farmers' incomes are at some of the lowest levels
they have ever been in history. And one of the issues that seems to have been
raised in previous weeks leading up to this coming election is firstly, an
acknowledgement of these declining incomes and we've heard this from every
party. And the Liberal government for one in the past few years has responded
to this crisis by providing up to $3.3 billion to bolster farmers incomes.

Now
Stewart, does providing this financial assistance not mask the root of the
problem as you've just described and by doing so does this assistance not
create an economic system that is somewhat artificial?

Stewart Wells: There's
a couple of different ways to look at that but you're right in a sense that the
transfers from Canadian taxpayers to Canadian farmers have, one of the words
would be mitigated the economic pain for farmers. And another way you can look
at it is that it has actually masked the originating problem. One of the
concerns that the National Farmers Union or one of the frustrations that we've
had over the years and it continues is that while governments, when they're
pushed far enough - and by that I mean when the protests from farmers get loud
enough and farmers start taking tractors and machinery onto the highways and
raising it on the federal level - the governments have eventually responded.
And Canadian farmers have been very grateful actually for the largesse of Canadian
consumers. And the Canadian consumers, it seems to us, as long as those
consumers feel that their money and their support is going to support family
farmers across the country and support good high quality food and at reasonable
prices, the Canadian taxpayers have been very quick to support family farmers.

On the
other hand, it has created this situation where governments have seem to look
at that as the end point for their involvement rather than the beginning of
their involvement. And so the frustration for the Farmers Union is that we have
not been able to get governments to actually look at the underlying root
causes, the structural causes of these chronically low net farm incomes. Of
course we feel that unless people are actually looking at the root causes and
trying to do something about that we will continually be in this chronic crisis
situation and unfortunately this crisis has been upon us for the better part of
20 years now. We've seen the companies end up with more and more and more
control over the food supply and again that has resulted in increased costs at
a return for Canadian farmers.

Jon Steinman: That was
Stewart Wells, President of the National Farmers Union who spoke with me over
the phone earlier from his home in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. You can find
more information on the NFU at www.nfu.ca where
there are some really comprehensive reports to browse through, one of which
relates to the topic we just discussed, and that one is called "The Farm Crisis
and Corporate Profits."

I extracted
a few statistics from that report that I thought would be interesting to
quickly note, and here are the profits in 2004 by a select group of companies
that are directly involved in Canadian agriculture. For one, Imperial Oil made
over $2 billion in profits in 2004. The Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan who
produce nitrogen fertilizers made $388 million in profit. The Dow Chemical
Company - $3.6 billion; DuPont, makers of Pioneer Hi-Bred seeds - $2.3 billion;
Pfizer, makers of veterinary drugs - $14.8 billion; Deere & Company makers
of those fine green tractors - $1.8 billion; Cargill who are involved in every
sector of the agricultural industry - grain handling, oilseed crushing,
malting, and beef packing for one - $2.7 billion and the Altria Group also
known as Kraft - $12.2 billion in profits in 2004. And farmers in 2004 recorded
a net loss of $7.7 billion.

So what are
the stances of our political parties on the issue of farmers' incomes? To
summarize what Stewart Wells explained the Conservative Party of Canada for one
is committed to adding an additional $500 million
annually to farm support programs. They commit to speeding up delivery
of the $755 million in emergency aid the Liberal government promised grain and
oilseed farmers in November.

So in other words, it is the
taxpayer, you and I, who will be subsidizing these negative incomes of farmers.
The NFUs report summarizes the crisis this way: a customer puts $1.35 on a
grocery-store counter for a loaf of bread. Powerful food retailers, processors,
railways, and grain companies take $1.30, leaving the farmer just a nickel.
Powerful energy, fertilizer, chemical, and machinery companies take 6 cents out
of the farmer's pocket and then taxpayers make up the penny. And as stated
before, the corporations walk away with billions of dollars in profits, and to
add insult to injury, most of these companies are not even Canadian!

The Liberal party as was just
mentioned has already pledged the $755 million promised to grain and oilseed
farmers. But they do mention the Easter Report as being a guide to providing a
solution to this income crisis. And this report is looked upon positively by
both the NFU and the CFA, the Canadian Farmers Association.

The
NDP addresses the farmer income crisis in their platform which vows that they
will

"work toward sustainable
agriculture outcomes that will help reduce input costs for pesticides,
herbicides and fuel, which are largely paid by Canadian farmers to
multinational corporations." They will "ensure fairer price competition in the
Canadian marketplace by working to develop producer run co-operatives. These
co-operatives are essential to restoring fair prices in a market dominated by a
few corporate agri-giants."

We will here more about the
NDP's platform from Southern Interior riding candidate Alex Atamanenko later on
in the show.

And the Green Party addresses
farmers incomes in their platform - "over the last five decades, federal
policies and subsidies have shifted food production from ecologically
sustainable farming and fishing families into huge aquaculture and
agribusinesses, placing the control and profits of our food supply into the
hands of multinational corporations." The platform continues, "The Green Party
seeks to restructure our agricultural markets to sustain farming and fishing
families in a domestic food economy and provide families with a fair share of
the consumer food dollar. A sustainable food economy in a healthy environment
requires keeping local small-scale agriculture alive and supporting a rapid
transition to organic agriculture rather than subsidizing costly
agro-chemicals, industrial food production, and genetically modified crops."
And that's from the Green Party's platform.

We'll hear more about this later
on from Andrew Lewis, the Green Party candidate for Saanich-Gulf Islands.

soundbite

Jon
Steinman: Welcome
back to Deconstructing Dinner, I'm your host Jon Steinman. On today's show we
are discussing the upcoming election and how food and agriculture play into the
platforms of our country's political parties, and while doing so taking a
deeper look at the some of the key issues facing our food supply and ultimately
the food choices available to us at grocery stores and markets.

One
of the buzzwords that has been thrown around in the past few weeks leading up
to this federal election is "smart regulation." This is a strategy introduced
in September of 2004. It's safe to say not all of us are fully aware of what
"smart regulation" entails and how it affects our food system here in Canada. I
caught up with Cathy Holtslander over the phone who joined me from her office
in Saskatoon. Cathy is the Project Organizer for the Beyond Factory Farming
Coalition - a campaign of the Council of Canadians. Beyond Factory Farming is a
national coalition promoting the common
vision: "Livestock Production for Health and Social Justice." Their mission is
to "promote livestock production that supports food sovereignty, ecological,
human and animal health as well as local sustainability, community viability
and informed citizen/consumer choice." Here's Cathy shedding some light on the
election buzzword "smart regulation."

Cathy Holtslander: Well, smart regulation is really just a
buzzword for the government's overall regulatory program and agenda. It's being
used to brand, I guess the Liberal government's overall restructuring of how
the federal government approaches regulation in Canada. I guess it's a nice
word for pushing a program because who could be against smart regulation, we
don't really want dumb regulation do we? But it's not a specific piece of
legislation. It's not a set of regulations. It's isn't something that's debated
in parliament. It's simply a buzzword that's being used to promote this
regulatory agenda.

The
regulatory agenda is based on something that the Chrétien government started.
They wanted to get a review of Canada's current regulatory policy and see how
it might be changed. And they had a committee working on that - it was called
the External Advisory Committee on Smart Regulations. And this committee was
made up primarily of representatives of Corporate Canada. And of course they
came up with recommendations that would serve Corporate Canada. And I guess one
of the things that really is a concern is it's basically talking about creating
regulations that promote business relationships with the United States and
harmonizing Canadian regulations with American regulations in order to promote
what they call transborder trade but in fact it would just be a way to pretty
much erase the border in terms of regulation.

Jon Steinman: Cathy
further explains how smart regulation applies to food and agriculture.

Cathy Holtslander: I hesitate to use the term smart
regulation without putting quotation marks around it because it's only smart
for the large business concerns such as the food processors and meat packers
and so on. It's looking at harmonizing our regulations with the United States.
We just want to have rules that are made in Canada and that would permit us to
develop a food system that reflects Canadian values and Canadian interests.
What we've seen is that in the past Canada through the Canadian Food Inspection
Agency has basically mirrored the American regulations quite a bit by promoting
what they call HACCP for meat inspection - Hazard Analysis and Critical Control
Points which the American system uses and approving hormones for use in beef
and antibiotics used in livestock production as growth promoters. And these
kinds of drugs are not acceptable in Europe. And as a result, Canada's become
very dependent on the American export market and is basically shut out of
Europe because of the kind of regulations that we have concerning veterinary
drugs.

So
the smart regulation process would tie us even further to the American system
because we would really - by choosing to harmonize with the United States it's
basically a choice not to be in a position to export to other countries and it
makes us quite dependent. It pretty much makes it into a continental food market
or particularly with meat.

Jon Steinman: One way to understand how our food
choices are shaped on a federal level is to take a closer look at the range of
amendments that our present elected officials had proposed prior to this
upcoming election being called. Bill C-27 is certainly one that further
exemplifies the principles of smart regulation. I asked Cathy to explain Bill
C-27.

Cathy Holtslander: Well, Bill C-27 is the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency enforcement act and it was brought forward in the last
parliament. It was pitched as a housekeeping measure but when we had a look at
it we saw that it wasn't just a matter of looking after a few little details to
make things run a little more smoothly. But it was really a structural change
in how food inspection and enforcement were going to take place in Canada.
Wayne Easter when he introduced it indicated that Bill C-27 was step two of a
three-step process. Step one was establishing the Canadian Food Inspection
Agency in 1997 which created an agency for food inspection and CFIA is also
charge with basically promoting exports of Canadian food products.

Step
two would be creating this enforcement mechanism and Bill C-27 was a very broad
ranging bill that would affect all of the Acts of parliament that deal with
food inspection. And that includes meat inspection, fish inspection, the health
of animals, the labeling, the Seeds Act and so on. And it would bring all of
those Acts under one Act which would be the CFIA Enforcement Act, Bill C-27 so
that the CFIA would create new regulations that would be consistent across all
of those Acts. And this is basically a regulatory housecleaning and resetting
up the regulatory system. And it dovetails with smart regulation. In fact when
it was introduced in parliament it was clearly stated that Bill C-27 was part
of implementing the smart regulation agenda. The wide range of regulatory
powers that this Bill would have given the CFIA under the wide range of Acts
would have created a legal basis for creating the regulations that would
harmonize Canadian food regulations with American regulations. Part of the
regulations proposed in Bill C-27 actually included foregoing Canadian
inspection and regulation in certain areas if the other countries that we were
dealing with had what they would deem equivalent regulations.

And
then the third step of the three-step process would be actually the regulations
themselves. So Bill C-27 was to set up the ability to create a new set of
regulations - step three was creating the regulations. Creating regulations is
something that goes on in the bureaucracy, it's not debated in parliament. So
Bill C-27 was very important because had it passed then the rewriting of the
Canadian Food Regulatory system would have occurred basically behind closed
doors within the CFIA and it would have been debated in parliament. However,
Bill C-27 died on the order papers - when the election was called all of the
bills that had not been passed basically become defunct. So that was good that
this Bill didn't pass. But because it is clearly part of an overall strategy
for integrating the Canadian food system with the American food system and
promoting this economic integration agenda, we do expect that something like
Bill C-27 would likely be proposed again in the future whether it's in this
coming parliament or the next one. So it is something to continue to be
concerned about and to watch for.

Jon Steinman: And we are hearing from Cathy
Holtslander of the Beyond Factory Farming Coalition as she explains to us the
implications of the now defunct Bill C-27, that nevertheless will be
reintroduced soon enough as it coincides with the strategy of smart regulation
as she also shed light on. Cathy describes how our political parties stood on
Bill C-27.

Cathy Holtslander: It was interesting in this last
parliament because it was a minority, the Committees were actually quite
engaged in dealing with legislation. And where Bill C-27 got to before the
election was called was it had gone through the committee stage where the
standing committee on agriculture which includes all the parties, looked at the
bill and amended it. They made a number of amendments and then the Bill was
going to go to second reading in parliament and it didn't get that far. So what
we had was a Bill that had quite a few changes made to it.

The
parties of course, the Liberals were promoting the Bill, they were trying to
get it passed through parliament. The Conservatives opposed the Bill. Some of
their interventions were related to reducing the CFIA's arbitrary powers and in
some cases that was to protect farm operators from being accused without any
kind of recourse. But there was also aspects to the Conservative's intervention
that would make it much more difficult and more expensive for a government to
regulate in a legitimate fashion. The NDP and the Bloc were generally were
against the Bill and had proposed amendments though that reduced some of the
arbitrary powers that the CFIA would have gotten if the Bill had passed as it
stood.

It's
difficult to say exactly where the parties stood on this Bill because it was in
a process of change. However I would say in general the NDP and the Bloc were
coming out more strongly for the kinds of protection to the smaller producers
and were clear about the impact of some of the smart regulation agenda that was
being promoted through Bill C-27. And the impact that some of the regulations
proposed would have to shut out smaller producers from being able to be
involved in the market to continue to produce because of some of the regulatory
burdens that Bill C-27 might have placed on them.

Jon Steinman: And that was Cathy Holtslander of the
Beyond Factory Farming Coalition. More info on the coalition can be found at www.beyondfactoryfarming.com and
as per usual, all of this information will be available on the show's website
shortly after the broadcast. And should you miss any part of this show or want
to refer it to family or friends, each broadcast of Deconstructing Dinner is
archived onto the shows website at www.cjly.net/deconstructingdinner.

We
are shortly going to hear from Southern Interior NDP candidate Alex Atamanenko,
and also from Andrew Lewis the Green Party candidate for Sannich-Gulf Islands.

But
before we get to them, here is an interesting tidbit of information that I came
across just recently. I conducted some research into the recent all-candidates
forum on the topic of agriculture that was organized by the North Okanagan
Organic Association that took place in Enderby on January 5th. As I
was informed over 180 people attended the forum, it was an amazing turnout. But
as I have also been informed, the performance by the candidates was not as
successful as the turnout. Andrea Gunner, who is an agricultural consultant and
manager of the BC Organic Milling Co-op in Armstrong was in attendance at the
forum, and she shares with us what took place.

Andrea Gunner: The forum was very well attended. The
hall probably holds about 200 people and it was at capacity. There were no
seats available. In fact they brought some more chairs but they were still
people standing. There were six candidates that attended - three from the
mainstream parties, one independent, one from the Canadian Action Party and
another one from something called the No Campaign which I believe is actually a
party but it's not a mainstream one.

What
was so disappointing about the forum was that given the amount of time that
they had to prepare for it, they had all prepared an initial submission to the
audience as it were talking about themselves in general and their interest in
agriculture and their interest in community. And then once they had done that
they received questions from the floor. The questions from the floor were
mostly for all the candidates but there were some that were primarily for the
three parties - the Liberal, the Conservative and the New Democratic Party.
What was so disappointing was that for an agricultural forum the time that they
had had to prepare was not either adequate or they didn't use that time very
effectively because it was a case of either stand there with your mouth closed
and look a fool or open it and prove yourself to be one. They had not even the
barest knowledge of how the agricultural industry works or how the policies
that come out of government affect real farmers. And given that they had had
about two weeks to prepare, one would have thought that they would have done
their homework a little bit better. There were some people who were very
polished and what they did was what most politicians do - answer the question
that they want to, not the one that they're actually asked.

Jon Steinman: What was the reaction from the audience?

Andrea Gunner: Consternation. There were several people
using sort of the non-verbal sidelong glance, there were people chuckling,
there were people writing notes and passing them to their neighbours. A lot of
people in the audience looking at each other with wide-eyed amazement at how
little these folks actually knew. It was embarrassing.

Jon Steinman: And that was Andrea Gunner of the BC
Organic Milling Co-op, recapping the January 5th all-candidates
forum on agriculture that took place in Enderby, which is the federal riding of
Okanagan-Shuswap.

As a
result of this lack of knowledge of agricultural issues on the part of these
candidates Andrea has taken it upon herself to ensure that their elected MP
will be well-informed on these issues. Her plan to undertake this can be heard
in audio format on the Deconstructing Dinner website.

Given
the performance of candidates as Andrea indicated, it would of course be
interesting to now hear from some candidates themselves.

I was
joined in the studio earlier by Alex Atamanenko, the NDP candidate here in
Nelson's Southern Interior riding, which extends from Princeton, all the way
out here to Nelson. Alex ran in the 2004 Federal election where he lost to
Conservative incumbent, Jim Gouk by only 680 votes.

Given
the vision of Deconstructing Dinner in discussing the impacts of our food
choices, I first asked Alex what considerations join him when he purchases food
in a grocery store. He also shares with us some key issues he is concerned
with.

Alex Atamanenko: Well
I think, you know one of the main issues is, can we as Canadians continue to
feed ourselves? So one of the things I try to do is to purchase food that is
grown in Canada and specifically fruit that is grown in British Columbia. My
wife jokes with me sometimes that I won't buy potatoes from Washington
(laughs). So that's one way I try to support our agricultural industry.

I think in general what's happening is we look at
farming - if we look at fruit growers, it is becoming increasingly difficult
for our producers to make any money. Something like 10 years ago the net profit
of all farmers in Canada was something like $3 billion. Now it's zero. And yet
costs are increasing and the governments seem to be putting stumbling blocks in
front of our producers. I'll give you an example. The fruit growers in the
Okanagan and Oliver/Osoyoos are having a hard time to make enough money to
continue producing. And one way that they are counteracting this is to grow
organic but it involves a tremendous, tremendous amount of energy. I know fruit
growers who pack and truck their own produce to Grand Forks, other communities
- that way they can make a few bucks.

What's happened for example in the Okanagan is that
heavily subsidized American produce - and I'll talk about subsidies later -
apples are being dumped in the British Columbian market putting our people out
of business. And currently the Fruit Growers Association is taking us to court
hoping to put a temporary duty on some of these apples coming in so they can at
least be able to sell their apples and make a profit. There's an assistance
program called CAIS from the federal government that is suppose to be there to
help people in times of need, farmers in times of need. That's administered out
of Winnipeg and I just read in the Oliver Chronicle that their payments are way
behind. So somehow the bureaucracy is not reacting to the plight of the
farmers. And not only do they have markets that they can't make money in the
markets but the aid program that's in place on behalf of the government is
dragging its heels and they're not able to get this help.

There's a program there and I'll continue to refer
to the Okanagan because I've just been there and this is part of a riding
called the SIR program - Sterile Insect Release program which has been working
to make apples free of the Codling Moth. Now what that means is that these
fruit growers don't have to spend dollars on pesticides and our environment is
more friendly - pesticides aren't going into the environment. They have to pay
a certain amount of this program. Part of it is funded federally and part of it
funded provincially. I read in the paper just last week that instead of paying
$107 per acre the cost has gone up to $122 an acre. So, clearly something is
wrong. Here we have a program that's partly subsidized by the provincial and
federal governments and yet the increased cost of the program is being dumped
on the shoulders of the fruit grower.

So, if we want to sustain this industry and we have
programs in place, my feeling is that we should be supporting them with
increased aid from the federal and provincial levels rather than having them
pay the cost of this program. And what's come out of this is that at meeting, I
believe either on the 27th or 28th, the Fruit Growers
Association in Kelowna, they're going to be voting to stay in this program or
not even though it's been helping them. So what may happen is they may vote for
purely economic reasons not to continue using the Codling Moth program and
we'll be back at square one using pesticides and other herbicides which are
harmful to the environment. So, that's one issue that's facing the agricultural
producers in Canada. The other one of course are the corporate farms and we see
that more on the Prairies, for example. We want to support family farms so they
can continue to carve out a lifestyle supplying us with food and at the same
time being able to have this rural lifestyle that we are so familiar with.

Jon Steinman: We are hearing from Southern Interior
NDP candidate Alex Atamanenko as we discuss how food and agriculture factor in
to the NDPs platform. As we have just discussed the issue of regulations
surrounding our food systems here in this country, Bill C-27 - the Canadian
Food Inspection Agency Enforcement Act was touched on by Cathy Holtslander. And
although the Bill is now dead as a result of this upcoming election, the Bill
is no doubt going to reappear in one form or another. Alex shares the NDP
stance on Bill C-27.

Alex Atamanenko: Well
our agricultural critic, Charlie Angus has come out with serious reservations
on the proposed bill. According to organizations such as the Council of
Canadians, this would lock us into the U.S. regulatory system, it would
increase privatization of the regulatory system, cripple our ability to protect
our food supply and diversify our trading relationships, make it even harder
for small farmers to survive because of the Food Inspection Agency's mandate to
promote the corporate agribusiness sector. And this is relatively new. There
use to be an inspection agency. Now part of their mandate is to promote.

So the question is how do you expect a government
agency who is promoting the corporate industry to at the same time put in
regulations that protect the consumer and protect the Canadian public? And
that's a questions that I've been asking myself and that's the question that I
will be asking in parliament if I'm elected because clearly, this bill is to
the detriment of local producers.

Jon Steinman: And that was NDP candidate Alex Atamanenko.
Next up we will hear from Andrew Lewis who will shed some light on the Green
Party's stance on food and agricultural issues. Andrew is the Green Party
Candidate for the Saanich-Gulf Islands riding. In 2004 Andrew was the federal
Green Party of Canada candidate for Saanich Gulf Islands, winning over 10,000
votes, that was 16.7% of the votes which was the highest for any Green Party
candidate in Canada. He is also a Deputy Leader of the Green Party itself. I asked Andrew what considerations join him
when he purchases food from grocery stores, markets or restaurants.

Andrew Lewis: Well, I take food very seriously in my
life. I'm a gardener so I actually grow quite a bit of food for myself and my
family and my wife is a chef so… Our incomes are pretty low - low to medium
income but I think we've probably pay more than most people for our food. We
take it very seriously. So we like to buy organic whenever we can. We like to
buy happy meat that's locally grown. I actually have, as I say, my own garden
so I like to grow a lot of food and supplement our diets with that. We have our
own chickens and I keep bees. And then yes, in a restaurant I try to go
vegetarian actually but I actually don't eat out a lot. I usually find it quite
disappointing.

Jon Steinman: Andrew
discusses some of the key issues facing food and agriculture.

Andrew Lewis: Large and growing issues that go right
across the spectrum from health and the growing crisis in B.C. - diabetes - our
sugar intake is three times the recommended intake and so there are lots of
health concerns. There's poverty and hunger in this country and in this day and
age it seems ridiculous that we still have poverty and yet there's still over
one million children in this country are in poverty.

We're
losing the ability to feed ourselves due to loss of farmland and organization.
And of course then there's the really big picture issue such as climate change
and how we are going to not only maintain but increase our food security under
the threat of climate change. We're losing our loss of bio-control, loss of
ability to save seed. I could go on - what else - peak oil, our dependency on
fertilizers and transport for our food means that as energy prices go up, we're
going to hit a crunch in food supply and with that is a loss of knowledge.
We're losing our farmers and we're losing that knowledge to grow our own food
so it's a very large and complex problem that I think we need to address. It
should be one of the key issues in this election campaign and unfortunately I'm
not hearing it from the other parties.

As
usual with all Green Party ideas and platform and principles we have to take an
integrated and co-operative approach to food security. We have to understand
that it's connected to our healthcare system and also we need to focus on local
sustainable agriculture. At the moment our federal government, its primary
support is for agribusiness and supporting producers and the transport
companies that - and supply that whole - the wrong end of agriculture. We need
to be supporting our local farmers. We need to at the federal level, we need to
be investing in research and development that supports a transition to organic
and sustainable agriculture that supports rural communities. We can do things
like tax-shifting which only the Green Party's talking about - increasing taxes
on artificial fertilizers and pesticides. And the taxes that are put onto
fertilizers and pesticides will be used to help subsidize transition funds for
sustainable local agriculture.

Jon Steinman: And that was Andrew Lewis, the Green Party
candidate for the Saanich-Gulf Island riding.

And that wraps up today's election feature here on
Deconstructing Dinner.

One more quick mention though, in the next couple of
months this show will feature a 2-part series focusing on the frequency with
which food issues make their way into our public education system. This will be
done in collaboration with local Nelson environmental organization Earth
Matters, who are promoting the country-wide One-Tonne Challenge, and are doing
so by introducing a program into our public schools that aims to educate students and
teachers about the links between food consumption choices and greenhouse gas
emissions. They will do this by offering a one hour class presentation followed
by a guided tour through a local supermarket. For those teachers in the Nelson area who are interested in booking
this initiative you can find more information at www.earthmatters.ca or by dialing
352-6011 ex.17.

Stewart Wells: So
we've seen the companies end up with more and more and more control over the
food supply and again, that has resulted in increased costs at areturn
for Canadian farmers.

ending theme

Jon Steinman: And that was this week's edition of Deconstructing
Dinner, produced and recorded in the studios of Nelson, British Columbia's
Kootenay Co-op Radio. I've been your host Jon Steinman. I thank my technical
assistant tonight Maria Jackman. All of those affiliated with this station are
volunteers, and financial support for this station is received through
membership, donations and sponsorship from local businesses and organizations.
For more information on the station or to become a member, you can visit www.cjly.net, or dial 250-352-9600. And should
you have any comments about tonight's show, want to learn more about topics
covered, or want to listen to this broadcast all over again, you can visit the
website for Deconstructing Dinner at www.cjly.net/deconstructingdinner.